My recent contribution in the thread “losing friends because of rape“:
Poodledoodle,
I’m sorry to hear about how you’ve been treated by small-minded folk who have no lives and revel in making other feel as small as they do. I hope you are able to find some real, true friends to lean on who will not run to the town gossips to make themselves feel important and popular.
I can relate having grown up in a small town. I currently live in a fairly large community as my county has over a million residents, so I blend in easily. However, I grew up in a community smaller than 1000 people. I can only imagine the gossip train that has ensued all over town since I told my own story online two years ago.
Most of these people stood idly by and did nothing while I was getting beat up and harassed daily while growing up – and some of them were the parents of the kids doing it. Unless they have something supportive to say or wish to share their own stories with me, I’ve no desire to listen to any garbage nor will I do so respectfully. I put up with enough growing up. Anyone from that area who has something negative to say can do it to my face and risk the consequences of a direct confrontation over it. I’m no longer the skinny little kid who got picked on and beat up. I grew up, spent six years on active duty in the USMC and have survived a traumatic and life-changing experience. It may sound bad, but I really don’t care what someone who never cared in the first place has to say about me now.
I hope you are able to get someplace safe mentally and find some true friends who care more about the trauma and less about the drama.
It’s a sad reality, but not everybody can deal with life changes. People leave when you get married, or have a baby, and both of these are supposed to be joyous occasions. There is just something to be said about some people’s inability to actually come to grips with the life changes that are not so joyous.
In the wake of being raped, I know I lost many friends. Most of them couldn’t get how it had vitally changed who I was. Overnight, my world had ended, but theirs went uninterrupted. They couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just assimilate back into society, where the anger and depression were truly coming from…
Not long ago, a friend from that time came back into my life (it’s been seven years now) and admitted she just didn’t know how to deal with what I was facing. She couldn’t handle it. It took the suicide attempt of someone close to her to gain a better understanding of what had happened to me.
I often say that all the books and pamphlets in the world can’t really prepare you for surviving rape, because they don’t tell you that not everybody will stand by you absolutely. It’s one of the hardest lessons for survivors to face, and certainly among the most unfair.
Sunday, July 25, 2010 at 1:01 am